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This is useful information, but everyone should still remember that admissions work differently in each department. In my (top 20 US) department, there is no pre-screen. All complete applicants are reviewed by one or more faculty members on the admissions committee. We review all applications before releasing any decisions. We release the majority of decisions all at once (modular processing time in the application portal) retaining a small pool of candidates as a waiting list. We offer funded admissions to more applicants than our target for enrollment, relying on historical yield information and the best information available about the current situation to wind up with an entering cohort close to our target size. One reason we take this approach may be that we target a larger class size than tbe mentions.
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The advice you have given on this thread and the claim you make about the admissions process here are inaccurate and badly informed. You are doing a disservice to other applicants by posting misinformation and repeating false claims about the admissions process on this thread and others. Many users have been very patient with you but it is long past time for someone to call this out. You have not even applied to PhD programs yourself. You have not studied or worked at a top program or a program that regularly sends applicants to top PhDs. Your advice is often misleading and it is disingenuous for you to double down on the basis of hearsay. To the OP: a strong letter is one that can vouch for your qualifications and potential based on specific information that is not otherwise available in your record, and by comparing you to a competitive pool. I know this because unlike dogbones, I have been on the admissions committee at the sorts of programs you are targeting, and I have written many letters of recommendations for students who have been admitted to other comparable programs. It sounds like the senior lecturer at the top program can write a strong letter for you by talking about your honors thesis and comparing you to other honors students. The other professor doesn't know as much about your ability to do independent research, does not know about your recent training or plans for graduate school, and does not have as strong a reference group to compare you to.
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No, there is no particular benefit to having a math professor write a letter for you. Your grades and math major speak for themselves and having a letter that simply narrates what is already in your transcript does not add any value. LORs are valuable when they convey information that is not readily available in other parts of the transcript, which in the best case means credibly vouching for your research potential. A letter from a math professor might be helpful if you had low grades in some math classes or had taken an unusual set of classes, and the math professor could put your transcript in context. Or, if the math professor him/herself works with economists, and can explain how your math background will allow you to do research in economics. But even a positive letter from a math professor saying "this person is one of the top students I have taught" does not sound as useful, at the margin and given your academic background, as a letter from an economist saying more or less the same thing but tailoring it to your aptitude for economics research.
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There are many RA positions that do not include tuition remission or the opportunity to take courses at the host university (anyone applying for such positions should ask about this benefit if it is important!). There are other RA positions that do not allow people to take courses in their first semester on the job, which means that to have even one additional course on the transcript before applying, the OP would have to remain in the RA position for at least two years. If the real deficiency is math rather than research, taking and paying for two-three courses in a semester could have a lower total cost than spending two extra years before starting a PhD. And depending on the previous courses and universities, not all nearby universities will add much value. Again, this is all why the OP should ask his/her own professors, who can give advice based on complete information. NB: Full time RA positions with faculty at top universities, in arrangements that allow RAs to take one course/semester, are often as competitive or more so than admissions to top PhD programs. There are lots of valuable RA experiences out there, but the kind that nearly universally increase the probability of acceptance to a PhD program are incredibly hard to get. Other positions need to be matched carefully to individual circumstances.
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I don't agree with this advice, at least not based on the information the OP has provided. Research experience, paid or not, is not the most important improvement to every profile. We don't have enough information to assess whether or not it is the missing piece for the OP, but based on the information provided, it might not be. The OP asked for advice about improving his/her math background, described limited math courses, and reported performing strongly in a master's thesis in a top program. The relatively weaker part of the portfolio might be coursework, not research. Not all research experience, even paid research experience, will have a significant effect on the admissions outcomes of all candidates. There are decreasing marginal returns, so it's less valuable for someone with a stronger initial research track record. Also, research experience that isn't credibly building valuable skills will not have much affect on admissions. To increase the chance of admissions, the OP would need to work with a researcher who is using up-to-date methods and, hopefully, who can write a credible letter of recommendation because he/she is recognized in the profession through his/her own publications or presentations. Finally, most successful PhD students do not build on their pre-grad school research work directly when they begin their dissertation research. They build on the skills or maybe return to a large, public data set they had used before, but they need to come up with their own topics that are not derivative of that previous work, and that are informed by the two years of coursework between. TL/DR: The OP should ask the professors from his/her master's program how to strengthen his/her profile. There are not one-size-fits-all prescriptions for admission; different candidates should pursue different strategies. Even with a "complete" profile in the "standard" format, users on this forum (especially those who are still students themselves or who have not even started graduate school) simply do not have the information or experience to offer narrowly-tailored advice to individual applicants.
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If you were a top student in a top master's program, your next step should be to talk to your professors from that program. They know your academic record and capabilities better than anyone on this forum, and have an interest in seeing their top students succeed. They also know where previous students who had similar MSc grades were admitted. Email the people who you would likely ask for letters of recommendation when applying to jobs or PhD programs and ask them whether they think you should apply to PhD programs this cycle, and if not, what they think you need to do to strengthen your profile. Ask them explicitly about the range of schools you should target if you apply this cycle, and the range you could target by taking additional courses or getting research experience first.
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Not a fact, and certainly not true at all schools. I have been on the admissions committee at my top 20. We do care about the GRE scores, but there is no mechanical first cut based on GREs. We look at them alongside the rest of the application. I don’t know what other departments do, but it is irresponsible to tell candidates that there is a universal threshold of 165.
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Bluntly, no. Rice has invested heavily in its program in recent years and made some very good hires. Those moves have not yet paid off in terms of graduate student placement. I think the best recent placement was at Davis-ARE and the vast majority of recent Rice PhDs have had non-academic placements. They get good jobs, but not the sort associated with “a really prestigious program.” Placements may improve over time as more students are recruited and trained under the new system, or they may stagnate, especially if the newly hired faculty aren’t retained. But I think the US News rankings peg Rice correctly. Your perception that they are under ranked may be an artifact of getting a lot of your information from this website, where Rice has a more active and respected presence than in the profession writ large. I think very highly of many of the faculty who have recently moved to Rice, but it takes a long time to build a department.
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IMO, an online MBA from UMass Amherst is not a good signal for admissions to a top 50 econ PhD program. As others have noted, it suggests lack of focus or understanding of the demands and objectives of a PhD in economics. Moreover, UMass Amherst's online MBA is not well respected by most economists. Depending on your educational background, it seems likely that it can only lower the average quality of your previous academic preparation. Some unsolicited advice from someone who's seen a lot of students apply to graduate school: take things one step at a time. You've said that you are about to begin a master's degree in economics. Focus on that. Get outstanding grades, fill in any missing math classes, and develop constructive relationships with the faculty in your program. Seek out opportunities to do research with economists who are actively publishing in well-regarded journals. Take the advice of the people who know you and your academic background in real life. Realize that for the majority of students, the well-trod path to an economics PhD is indeed the most likely one, and looking for unusual add-ons like the MBA you propose is likely to be less productive than excelling along the standard dimensions.
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A pattern of Ws and Fs raises concerns about time management and persistence, which are important skills for graduate students. That is a general statement, not a comment on your particular transcript or strengths and weaknesses. When those grades are early in a student's education they can be attributed to immaturity which has presumably been outgrown. They are more problematic in junior or senior year. There is not much you can do about them now. Having work experience and recommendations that speak to your ability to see things through and persevere might help. Otherwise, I agree with jjrousseau: apply widely and anticipate high variance.
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Some of the information you refer to comes from self-selected, self-reported, necessarily incomplete information posted on the internet (and I hope no US schools violated FERPA by releasing prospective student lists with information about grades, test scores, and letters of recommendation). Be careful in what you conclude from it. The quality of applicants, admitted students, and rejected students was not unusual in my T20 department this year. There has been a long-term trend towards stronger applicants with more math and research experience. But based on more than 800 applications we received this year was not a deviation from trend. Future applicants shouldn't conclude that this year was extra hard and therefore next year will be easier.
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If you were a student in my department and demonstrated this sort of attitude towards classmates, faculty, or undergraduates, you'd be kicked out of the program. The profession doesn't need this attitude, whether or not you think it is funny.
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These things change over time. I was able to find an old ETS guide that provides percentiles for 2011-2014: http://dbbs.wustl.edu/PortalDocs/GRE%20Concordance%20information%202014.pdf. In that time frame, a 160 was the 78th percentile and a 170 was the 98th percentile, which doesn't change the way I interpret the results.
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In this case, the magnitude of the effects is important. I don't have GRE percentiles for the time frame of the data in the paper, but averaged over 2014-2017, a 160 on the quantitative section is the 74th percentile, and a 170 is the 96th percentile (https://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/gre_guide_table1a.pdf). Therefore, moving from a 160 to a 170 is associated with a 9.5 percentile (or 0.34 SD) increase in the micro grade (using estimates from Table 2, column 1). Note that I share the authors' interpretation that specifications controlling for admissions rank are less informative for this exercise because it is likely a function of GRE scores. This is as large as the premium associated with attending a top-15 university, for example. To the person who down-voted the previous post, why? What about the post was offensive or inaccurate?
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The claims on page 1 that GRE scores do not predict performance is at odds with the empirical evidence. Athey et al. find that GRE scores strongly predict first year grades, and that first year grades predict job placements. (It is not surprising that controlling for the intermediate outcome, the correlation between GRE scores and predicted grades is small.) NB: economics departments care about first year grades because passing comps is a necessary condition for receiving a PhD, so even if GRE scores only predicted first year grades, it would be rational for admissions committees to consider them.